The demands of the modern display market have changed dramatically in recent years. Displays are expected to have high resolution, low power consumption and fast response time. However, these factors are fundamentally limited in conventional liquid crystal displays (LCD). In particular, the response time is limited to a few milliseconds in nematic LCDs.
Fast response times are needed in LCDs in order to reduce image blurring for fast moving displays such as in sport broadcasting. Fast response times are also needed in field sequential color (FSC) displays which operate on a principle that can improve the optical efficiency of LCDs by several magnitudes. This quality is important for building displays with low power consumption.
There are several approaches to fast LCDs. With very thin cell gaps, the response time of an LCD can be reduced to fractions of a millisecond. Likewise, fast response modes such as the optically-compensated bend (OCB) mode can have a response time of 0.5 ms. Also a No-Bias-Bend (NBB) mode has the same response time as the OCB mode without the complication of a bias voltage. The operating voltages for both the OCB and NBB modes are rather high as the dark state relies on a homeotropic alignment. When flexoelectric effect is explored, response times can be reduced to 0.3 ms, but the operating voltage remains high. Even the “Blue Phase” LCD where the response times may be 0.5 ms have the disadvantage of high operating temperature and large driving voltage. Thus, none of the approaches is satisfactory in realizing displays having high resolution, low power consumption, and fast response time.